Area 51.
 (c) 2004 Jonathan Cauldwell.
 Amstrad CPC conversion by Nicholas Campbell 2006.


 Project started      16.11.2006.
 Project completed    18.12.2006.

 Compile length:      7744 bytes.


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 Area 51 is a platform game of progressive difficulty.  It was originally
 released for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum for the 2004 Minigame competition
 (see <http://starbase.globalpc.net/minidir/>), and was later converted to
 the Amstrad CPC.


 The "plot", for what it's worth...


 After a heavy night drinking with his friends Fizzog decides to go for a
 quick spin around the galaxy on his Vespa CosmoScooter.  Unfortunately,
 Fizzog isn't the greatest driver at the best of times and after a very
 unsavoury space rage incident on the outskirts of Ganymede he crash lands
 on a primitive blue planet called Earth.

 Poor old Fizzog's space scooter is wrecked and to fix it he needs new
 components which aren't generally available on this backward little
 world where some of the inhabitants are still using 8-bit computers!
 However, other extra terrestrials have visited this planet before, and
 most of them were taken, along with their equipment, to a place called
 Area 51.  This is Fizzog's best chance of sourcing the components to
 repair his vehicle and return home.

 Unfortunately a meddlesome Earthling cult calling itself "The US Army"
 has been conducting genetic experiments upon Fizzog's predecessors and
 the hideous consequences of these Frankenstein-like dabblings patrol the
 very hangars and sheds Fizzog needs to search.  Area 51 is a dangerous
 place indeed...



 On loading, press the RETURN key to begin the game.

 Leap from platform to platform collecting components for Fizzog's
 scooter, indicated by blue and white diamonds, collect all components on
 a screen to progress to the next level.  Contact with patrolling aliens
 and deadly spikes, or falling too far will cost you one of five lives,
 when all lives are used the game ends.  An extra life is awarded on
 completion of the seventh and final screen.

 You will be pleased to note that there is no time limit for completion of
 any screen.

 Use the following keyboard controls:

 Q : left (A on an AZERTY keyboard)
 W : right (Z on an AZERTY keyboard)
 SPACE : jump


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 Fully annotated source code is provided.  To compile and/or edit the game
 yourself under Windows, you will need to install MinGW and MSYS, which
 can both be downloaded from <http://www.mingw.org/>.  You will also need
 to install CPCXFS (for storing and retrieving files from the DSK disc
 images used by Amstrad CPC emulators), and zmac (for assembling the
 source code).  You can download both of these programs from the NVG
 archive at <ftp://ftp.nvg.ntnu.no/pub/cpc/>; they are located in the
 utils/cpc directory of the archive.

 To compile Area 51, run MSYS, go to the directory where the source code
 is stored by typing e.g. 'cd /c/cpc/area51/src/' (without the quotes),
 and type 'make' (again without the quotes).  Hopefully everything will
 work OK.  If not, open the file called Makefile in a text editor and edit
 it as necessary.

 If you are running an Amstrad CPC emulator while compiling Area 51, you
 must ensure that it is not currently using either the development or the
 game discs; otherwise, the make program will be unable to access these
 discs and the compilation process will fail!

 If you want to edit the sprites, you can load the file SPRITES.SCR on the
 development disc (area51_dev.dsk) into OCP Advanced Art Studio (an art
 package for the Amstrad CPC).  The file sprtodat.asm contains source code
 in C for reading the sprites and saving them as ASCII source code.

 Have fun!

 Nicholas Campbell, 24.12.2006
 Original instructions by Jonathan Cauldwell, 04.06.2004